Hello, Dreamwidth! I'm eagerly watching the clock until the weekend getaway I have planned with my lovely wife -- and boy howdy do I need a vacation -- so in order to pass the time, I bring you an offering of hopefully-useful Dreamwidth information. Behind the cut:

This month we welcome new developers purplecat and randomling, both of whom have been kicking ass and taking names! We're always eager to have new developers join us, so whether you've been looking for an excuse to learn Perl or you've been doing this for years, we'd love to have you.

Javascript modernization: release candidate

For those of you who have been participating in the new Javascript on journals beta test, you are likely already aware of this, but for everybody else: we have now labeled the existing beta as the release candidate. This means that barring any major, showstopping issues, the new version will be made default on the site very soon.

After the next code push -- which will likely be sometime next week -- we will be turning the beta flag on for everyone for one last test, with the ability to opt out of the beta if you discover a showstopper bug that prevents you from using your journal. With the code push after that, the new code will be taken out of beta entirely, and be made the default behavior for everybody.

This is almost entirely a backend change, being done to modernize the Javascript used across the site. We're pretty confident that the release candidate has had most of the major issues smoothed out by now, so you shouldn't notice any major changes. You may notice some errors when expanding comments, especially on entries with lots of comments or threads that are very deeply nested; the next code push should fix some of that. (So you don't need to report that issue!)

(Also, because there has been some confusion: the Beta Features page has two separate beta tests running right now: the new Create Entries page beta and the New Javascript on Journals beta. We're talking about the New JS on Journals beta -- the first of the two, not the second. You're still welcome to beta test the new Create Entries page, but it's not yet at release-candidate status!)

Paying via credit card

No, not an announcement of changes to the payment system -- a request to y'all in the hopes of saving some time and energy all around.

If you're using somebody else's credit card -- a parent, a partner, a friend, a roommate, etc -- to pay for your DW account, please let them know, and let them know that the charge will appear on their statement as coming from "Dreamwidth Studios, LLC". In the past few weeks we've had a few phone calls from people wondering what that charge on their statement was! (And since people are thinking that they're calling a big business, and if it's after hours nobody will be there and they'll just leave a message, one of those calls was at 1AM -- fortunately I keep odd hours, heh.)

We were able to straighten out the problem each time, but in order to prevent problems -- and to save me from having to answer the phone, which I hate! -- please be sure to confirm permission before using somebody else's credit card and let them know how the charge will appear on the statement. This will also keep your parent/partner/friend/roommate from panicking and cancelling their credit card. :)

Request for comment: username squatting

The question of username squatting -- people registering hundreds and hundreds of accounts to sit on them, to claim popular usernames, or to trade or sell them later -- has been coming up lately, and we're looking for a way to handle it that will be fair to everybody, without affecting people who are using the site legitimately.

If you have some time to consider the problem and give us feedback, check out the Request for Comment posted in dw_biz, which lays out all the factors, and comment there!

Meanwhile, I'd like to once again remind people that trading or selling usernames or accounts is against the Terms of Service, because a traded account can never be fully secured. We've seen a definite increase in the number of instances of account trading or selling lately, and we are definitely going to start taking stronger actions to stop it when it happens. Please don't do it, either by arranging trades on Dreamwidth or elsewhere.

Spam (not the singing Vikings kind)

As many people have noticed, we're seeing an uptick in spam coming from logged-in users, coming in the form of comment spam, private message spam, and spam blogs that keep to themselves but exist to boost search engine rankings.

The best and fastest way to handle these, if you get them, is to send a report to the antispam team. For comments, delete them and mark them as spam. For private messages, visit the Inbox and select the "Mark as spam" link at the bottom of the notification. Once you do this, there's no need to notify us further; the antispam team will take it from there.

The only time you should report a spammer to the Terms of Service team instead of using the "Mark as spam" option is if you find a journal while browsing around the site that looks like it's a spam journal designed to boost search engine rankings. (And do let us know about those; they're not as intrusive as comment or PM spammers, but they're just as bad for the site as a whole and the harder and faster we step on them now, the less likely that the people behind that kind of thing will start thinking of DW as a good host for their garbage.)

Conferences and Meetups

We're pleased to say that Dreamwidth will be representing at YAPC::NA in Madison, WI from June 13-15, and at OSCON in Portland from July 16-20. Thanks to your support of Dreamwidth, this year we're going to be able to bring some of our volunteer developers along with us, too, which is tremendously exciting news. (Thank you to everyone who's paid for an account recently -- your payments are what's allowing us to reinvest in our volunteer developers, which will pay off down the road in awesome new features and fixes!)

I'm going to be attending the Ada Initiative's AdaCamp DC unconference July 10-11, and if you're interested in the topic of women in open technology and culture, why not consider attending as well?

On the topic of Dreamwidth meetups, meanwhile, if you're a SCA member as well as a Dreamwidth denizen, there's going to be a DW meetup at the Warriors and Warlords event in Northshield (Boscobel, WI) this July. For discussing, planning, and reporting on Dreamwidth in-person meetups, check out dw_meetups.

Default Theme Poll

Our default theme poll last month showed an interesting split: the two styles that were neck and neck for much of the voting were Abstractia, a super-snazzy, high-concept (and gorgeous!) layout, and Five AM, a super-simple, clean and organized (and gorgeous!) layout.

Five AM was the winner, however, and that means it's time to narrow it down further. Go check out the available themes, and help us pick the one that should be the default theme for newly-created accounts for a while:

And, as a reminder, if you've got a color theme for one of our existing styles, or even a completely new style, that you'd like to submit for public use, check out dreamscapes. Or, if you're looking for an easy way to get involved in Dreamwidth development, taking submitted themes and turning them into a version that can be applied to the code is a great way to get started, because it requires no experience or special knowledge (seriously, you don't even have to know or learn Perl for it).

Arts and Culture: Changing Seasons

Just like last time, I'll turn it over to pinesandmaples to give us a tour of some of the neat things people are doing or making on Dreamwidth:

As days slide off the calendar and into April, a young student's thoughts turn to final exams and stealing kisses in library study carrels between papers. Fortunately for y'all, the rest of Dreamwidth has poetry, bunnies, Norwegian socks, and bicycles on their minds. This collection of links has a common thread of occupying the space between seasons as both hemispheres move into new weather patterns.

katieintheworld acknowledged the true nature of transitional seasons with these amazing Selbu Stars socks (Ravelry link, mea culpa), ready for windy days and chilly nights between the sunny patches of theseason.

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And that's it from us for another update! As always, if you're having problems with Dreamwidth, Support can help you; for notices of site problems and downtime, check the Twitter status page; if you've got an idea to make the site better, you can make a suggestion.

We'll see you in a few weeks for our next update. (Meanwhile: who else already has your tickets for the release of the Avengers movie? ...is it here yet?) I shall leave you all with something that boosted my mood at least 80% the instant I saw it: Suddenly, ducks.

Don't feel embarrassed! :)

(Further ways to make myself look unaware: Until I got some that night, I had no idea there was such a thing as PM spam. I did Google searches on the name of the account responsible and the email addy tied to it, and both show up on dating sites, Facebook, other blogging places, just everywhere, with the same offers of um, "lovin", worded in exactly the same way. I had no idea such things went on.)

Re: Don't feel embarrassed! :)

Ha! Maybe we did. (But no, I won't be divulging its contents, nor agreeing or disagreeing that someone else's PM spam is in any way identical to my own, since maybe someone else is reading just to see whom it was that got them ToSed).